A report surfaced over at Motor Authority.com that Nissan's Mississippi plant will be converted over to building their upcoming light-commercial truck line. Currently vehicles being built there are the Nissan Armada, Infiniti QX56 and the Nissan Quest minivan. Sales of these vehicles have been way down this year. Those in the know believe Nissan will just get out of this market altogether. So far Nissan has not offered any comment.
kcram says:
08:41 AM, 12/12/08
Makes sense. The Armada/QX are based on the Titan platform. Since Nissan is already committed to replacing the Titan with a restyled Dodge Ram, there's no reason to continue production of the SUVs on an outgoing platform. And just as they produce a minivan for VW, Chrysler could easily do the same for Nissan.
xwesx says:
09:29 AM, 12/12/08
"And just as they produce a minivan for VW, Chrysler could easily do the same for Nissan."
God help them if they go that route! The new Chrysler minivan is a quagmire of incompetency.
roar02ram says:
09:47 AM, 12/12/08
I'm not sure about the Quest, though - they showed a concept of that just a year ago, I believe. I would think that vehicle might still persist at a different plant given that its platform isn't going away. Then again, it doesn't sell well...
moparbad says:
10:23 AM, 12/12/08
Chrysler may yet be purchased by Nissan Renault in first quarter 2009.
Nissan would sell Ram as Titan and Durango/Aspen SUV's if market conditions warranted.
moparbad says:
10:31 AM, 12/12/08
Nissan Renault may purchase Chrysler in 1st/2nd quarter 2009. Ram and Aspen/Durango could be sold as Nissan's.
kcram says:
11:30 AM, 12/12/08
Durango/Aspen is already dead... production ends this month.
ateixeira says:
12:06 PM, 12/12/08
These segments are all well past their heyday, and as mentioned above Nissan never really put a dent in any of them.
May as well replace these with completely different models and go after new (possibly growing) markets.
The Cube, for starters.
firstwagon says:
12:35 PM, 12/12/08
It's not surprising.
Full size SUV's will never die out altogether as there's nothing else on the market that can fill their unique role.
They will however go back to the volume levels of the 70's and 80's before they became a fashion item.
All the minor players (like Nissan, Toyota and Kia) will drop out of this market.
billt9 says:
11:19 AM, 12/14/08
Nissan has 2 big SUV chassis, the Armada and the Patrol.
The QX was already to be on the Patrol chassis. Maybe they'll just consolidate to one chassis for the world and ship them from Australia.